Propagation of Plants 105 



same way when I painfully rake up my walks, I note the large 

 way she sweeps a whole hillside with one touch of her winds. 

 I love her magnificent operations. They are superb, inimi- 

 table, perfect!' 7 



Adam was in a critical mood. " I think she is very imper- 

 fect," he responded. " She needs a man. Unaided she works 

 in a blundering brutal way: she averages well: her cloud- 

 bursts and washouts and her parching droughts give us a 

 fairly uniform average rainfall. Remember she wrecks and 

 destroys as well as vivifies. She is a great extremist. She is 

 far from perfect," and he spoke as a man who had thrown 

 down the gauntlet. 



I, who am a blind and ardent worshipper of Nature, 

 dropped down into the arena and picked up the glove. " How 

 so?" I inquired, determined that he should make good his 

 charge. 



"Her great cosmic laws are not applicable to the individual. 

 She is a wild untamable force. She does not strive for per- 

 fection. Where do you find a perfect plant, or even a perfect 

 leaf? She begins well, but grows absent-minded about de- 

 tails," continued he, warming to the argument. 



"How about the exquisite and perfect mechanisms re- 

 vealed by the microscope? It opens a whole world of unap- 

 proachable beauty, harmony and symmetry," I questioned. 



"That may be true," replied he, "but her vast forces on one 

 hand and her minute details on the other reveal also the very 

 painful gap that lies between. Given perfect atoms and per- 

 fect forces, we should have perfect creations, which we cer- 

 tainly don't have: something is wrong. Nature unaided 

 blunders sadly. Nature plus man is Art; Nature plus man is 

 Progress; Nature plus an able assistant produces a relative 

 approach to perfection. For example: compare wild natural 

 fruit with the Spitzenberg apple or the Albemarle pippin; the 



